


Diffusion

by virdant



Series: Diffusion, and other Phenomenon [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Experimental Style, M/M, Relationship Study, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-10 05:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15284676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: "...gases of different nature, when brought into contact, do not arrange themselves according to their density, the heaviest undermost, and the lighter uppermost, but they spontaneously diffuse, mutually and equally, through each other, and so remain in the intimate state of mixture for any length of time.”Thomas Graham,Diffusion Processes1971.Will and Hannibal, over the course of three seasons.





	1. the natural movement of particles…

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to every single person who supported me on this journey: Tylar, [Ellie](http://anthropologicalhands.tumblr.com/), [Adzusai](https://twitter.com/adzusaiart?lang=en), [Pann](https://www.instagram.com/panngelicious/?hl=en), [Mika](https://www.instagram.com/kinokodoncosplay/?hl=en), and all others. Special thanks to [Rei](http://reireichu.tumblr.com/) and [K](http://walnutsuitcase.tumblr.com/), who were there for me seven years ago when I first started experimenting with form in my writing.
> 
>  **PLEASE TURN ON CREATOR SKINS!** This story relies on a custom CSS skin. Please do not use AO3's download method to download this story as a PDF or ebook--the formatting will be dropped. A PDF of the story can be found [[ here ]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uk54bdjgp33n9mp/diffusion_pdf.pdf?dl=0)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you, in advance, for reading.
> 
> * * *

* * *  
  
---  
  
The weekend before he meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham goes fishing. There’s a stream behind his house; he wades into the water, anchoring himself in the middle as if a rock in churning rapids.  
  
He casts his line. The morning sun is warm on the back of his neck, the air chill with the impending winter. The cold of the water permeates through his waders, bracing and numbing at the same time. He returns home just before noon, two fish with him.   
  
He will remember that morning, the water flowing around him, the sun glimmering over the surface, and his feet anchored deep. There is nobody around—no evidence for him to interpret, no murders for him to read, no murderers for him to understand.  
  
It is just Will, in the middle of the stream, alone. The water is clean and cold. It is never the same twice.  
  
* * *  
  
Hannibal eats alone.  
  
It’s well cooked; the lungs are tender and the cartilage worked until no longer tough. The knife is sharp, but not that sharp. Nonetheless, it cuts through the tissue. He lifts the meat to his mouth and inhales—the malliard effect, among others, leaves a memorable scent. When he chews, the sound of his teeth and jaw echo through the bones of his skull; they follow him, all the way to his mind palace, and the steady snap and crack of teeth snapping through cartilage, of jaws working muscle soft and tender.   
  
The dining room is fragrant with herbs and soft dirt. In the darkness, alone, it is as if he is germinating, his root system spread and just waiting to sprout.  
  
* * *  
  
In Minnesota, Will Graham opens the door and lets Hannibal Lecter in; his mind is on the case and the solution is precipitating in the shadows of his mind. The sight of him draws Will short, before he remembers who he is; he is focused, unerringly, on a cannibal who loves his daughter so much that he has murdered nine girls.   
  
Eight girls.   
  
As the sun rises, he is fed and watered, and he eats with the careless abandon of the hungry. He eats until there is nothing left to eat, and then he sets down his fork. Hannibal Lecter is here on overtures of friendship. Will Graham has never needed friendship.   
  
It is their first meal together.  
  
He says, “I don’t find you that interesting.”  
  
“You will,” Hannibal says, steadily, back.   
  
* * *  
  
His hands trembled. Garrett Jacob Hobbs lay slumped against his kitchen counter, a full clip of bullets in his chest. Blood splatter clouded his glasses.  
  
He cannot close the wound in Abigail Hobbs’ throat.   
  
Hannibal pushes his hands aside.  
He pinches the jugular vein closed.   
  
Abigail Hobbs will live. He stands before the Hobbs house, eyelids shuttering. He can see—  
  
_See?_  
  
* * *  
  
He goes back to the stream. He stands in the middle of the water, cold and familiar. Abigail Hobbs lies in a hospital bed, in a medically induced coma.   
  
Hannibal Lecter sits in a room of marbled stone.  
  
Will Graham turns back to his house. He stands in broad daylight and stares at it as it condenses in the distance, sharp peaks and empty windows. In the daylight, there is no way to tell if it is inhabited or not. It simply is, a house in the distance.   
  
The dogs press against his legs when he returns. He’s fed them and housed them and they remember Will Graham. The Will Graham before Minnesota fed them and housed them and the Will Graham after Minnesota will feed them and house them, and that is enough for them. They offer no words of assurance or judgement, and Will says nothing in return, just bends down and presses his face to their soft fur.  
  
_See_ , Hobbs’ voice whispers like the wind through water. _See?_  
  
Hannibal Lecter types up a letter of recommendation. More or less sane, he assures. Totally functional.  
  
* * *  
  
A thousand killers slip through Will Graham’s mind, old and new, and despite his moorings he finds himself floating, adrift, as if through water.  
  
He opens his eyes, and he’s standing before a classroom full of his students. They watch him for insight, and he closes his eyes, bracing himself against the current of their awaiting gazes.  
  
There are lectures he can give in his sleep: old serial killers, whose pathology have been studied a dozen times over. There are lectures he can give even when he is stalking a stag through the woods, knee deep in rushing water.  
  
This is not one of them.  
  
He clicks the slide. Cassie Boyle hangs, impaled on the antlers of a severed stag head. Her ankles are crossed. For a moment, he remembers, and then: “The killer who did that wanted us to know he wasn’t the Minnesota Shrike. He is better than that.”  
  
Hannibal enters. He watches.  
  
“He is an intelligent psychopath. He is a sadist. He will never kill like this again.”   
  
“So how do we catch him?” Will Graham asks.   
  
“This copycat,” Will reveals, eyes raised to the back of the room. “is an avid reader of Freddie Lounds and Tattlecrime.com. He had intimate knowledge of Garret Jacob Hobb’s murders, motives, patterns, enough to recreate them and, arguably—   
  
“elevate them to art.”  
  
Before Garrett Jacob Hobbs murdered his wife and attempted to murder Abigail, there had been a single phone call, untraceable. It had been enough to send him into turmoil. It had been enough to have him take a knife and slash his wife’s throat, slash his daughter’s throat.  
  
He clicks, one more slide, and says:   
  
“I believe the as-yet unidentified caller was our Copycat Killer.”  
  
Hannibal smiles.  
  
* * *  
  
Murderer after murderer, Will Graham drifts through their minds, spluttering in the depths of their depravity, flowing downstream closer and closer—  
  
There is one murderer who dominates the Chesapeake Bay.  
  
Over a hundred and fifty major rivers drain into the Chesapeake Bay. Of all of them, the Potomac is perhaps the most well known. Of all of the murderers’ minds that Will drifts on, there is one that he has yet to see.  
  
Along the Patapsco River, close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay, stands a city called Baltimore.  
  
Like a dam, Jack Crawford directs Will Graham towards the Chesapeake Ripper.  
  
In a fortress of stone in Baltimore lives a man who claims to be the Chesapeake Ripper.  
  
And Will Graham goes and looks, and goes and looks, and goes and looks. Murderer after murderer, murder after murder, night after night.  
  
Murder after murder.  
  
Corpse after corpse.  
  
Flesh and more flesh.  
  
He is not the first to look. He will not be the last. But, as Will sinks deeper and deeper, from sunlit surface to unfathomable depths, he opens his eyes, and amidst the pressure of the water—  
  
“I have a date with the Chesapeake Ripper,” Will says.  
  
And, flourishing in the fortress that is domain, Hannibal spreads his fare before his guests and smiles.  
  
“Nothing here is vegetarian.”  
  
* * *  
  
Over half of the human body is water by mass.  
  
But that does not stop fire from sparking in the brain.  
  
Will Graham sits in Hannibal Lecter’s office. He clutches at his head. “You’re supposed to be my anchor,” Will murmurs.  
  
Hannibal sinks his roots into soft loam.  
  
His feet are anchored in silt. He knows what is right. He knows what is wrong.  
  
He is adrift.

| 

Will is adrift.   
  
The air is quiet and still. In this room, there is only the two of them—  
  
Adrift.

| 

Anchored.   
  
He buries his face in his hands. He is standing in the water and he is drowning, an inexorable weight around him.  
  
His roots are deep and the water only serves to allow them to grow deeper.  
  
And they both know, with unerring certainty, several facts.  
  
1) This is not the Ripper.

| 

2) This is not the Ripper.   
  
3) The Chesapeake Ripper kills in sounders of three.  
  
* * *  
  
Children are born in water; from incubation they are cradled by its embrace; they are baptized by it and emerge into the world still wet with the water of the womb.   
  
Abigail is reborn in blood.  
  
Will thinks he would like to teach Abigail how to fish. Anchor their feet in the stream behind his house with fishing rods in hand. Teach her to cast a line. Teach her to lure instead of hunt. Let her be reborn in water.  
  
Abigail has always been a hunter.  
  
But Will Graham is not Abigail’s father, even if he has Hobbs haunting his every step.   
  
It is by Hannibal’s hands that she died and by Hannibal’s hands that she lives and by Hannibal’s hands that she will thrive.  
  
_See?_ Hobbs whispers.  
  
To Hannibal, she floats just under the surface of awareness—   
  
Yet as if searching through a deep mist—  
  
Will Graham is blind.  
  
He takes her to Minnesota. 

| 

“This will hurt,” he says before he cuts off her ear.   
  
* * *  
  
These are facts that both Will and Hannibal know.  
  
Over half of the human body is water. It delivers nutrients, it lubricates the joints, it regulates the body temperature. 

| 

Food is life, you put food into your belly and live.   
  
These are events that Will and Hannibal experience.  
  
Will Graham coughs up Abigail Hobbs’ ear. It’s hard, cartilaginous tissue thick in his mouth, tongue and jaw working to expel the tissue, echoing from the bones in his jaw into his eardrum. Outside, the winter air is crisp and the scent of evergreens creep in through the cracks in the glass. 

| 

Hannibal cuts off Abigail Hobbs’ ear and feeds it into Will Graham’s body.   
  
Here is a fact.  
  
Water protects the body from shock.  
  
* * *  
  
Will Graham washes over him, a current sweeping away detritus to reveal the truth underneath. Fever and delirium are the only reason that he remains blind.  
  
_See_ , Hobbs whispers.  
  
He cups Will’s jaw in his hands. There is only one thing to do. The only way to contain a stream is to place it behind walls.  
  
Will Graham sees.  
  
* * *  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Reblog on Tumblr](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/175977243026/fic-hannibal-tv-diffusion)  
>  Read my thoughts on:  
> [[ Hannibal's use of water imagery in part 1]](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/176040236091/diffusion-meta-hannibals-discussion-of-water-in)  
> [[ The stream as a means for Will to identify Hannibal]](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/176061662779/diffusion-meta-the-stream-as-a-medium-to)


	2. …from high to low concentration…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder: **PLEASE TURN ON CREATOR SKINS!** This story relies on a custom CSS skin. Please do not use AO3's download method to download this story as a PDF or ebook--the formatting will be dropped.

* * *  
  
---  
  
The Grand Canyon was carved from water, a river etching itself deeper and deeper into rock: weathering sandstone, eroding the dirt away, depositing it in the distance. Water still flows through the Colorado River, rising when it rains, when snow melts—  
  
In Baltimore, it rains.  
  
Will Graham remains behind bars in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.   
  
He’s standing knee-deep in the stream behind his house, fishing pole in hand. The fly shimmers under the surface. The stream flows steadily, finding a new path easily around the obstacle of his body.  
  
The light shimmers on the water. The leaves have changed color. It is fall, and the air is crisp without the bite of winter. The water is still warm from the summer, rising ever so slightly from the autumn rains.  
  
Hannibal Lecter stares at the river, where they have fished corpses from its depths.  
  
Unlike earth, water is always moving.  
  
Anchored in the stream, Will casts his line once more. He has always been a fisherman, always understood how to lure rather than hunt.   
  
Some things should have remained buried forever.  
  
* * *  
  
Will Graham remains behind walls.  
  
Will Graham sits behind bars.  
  
Hannibal sits in his office, in darkness like soft loam, silt washed up from the shore. There is something germinating, root system spread and just waiting to sprout, in the dark of Hannibal’s office, in the dark of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.  
  
In Will’s dreams, he teaches Abigail how to fish. She stands in the water with him, the banks of the river sloping in, overrun with overgrowth. Eventually, time will widen the river, water eroding away the banks, but there is no time now.  
  
Will Graham is not coming, today.  
  
Hannibal sits in the dark, silent and still. He thinks:  
  
Will Graham is not coming tomorrow either, or the day after. He will have to preserve Will Graham’s appointment time, like bones buried deep for eons.  
  
His cell in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is dark and quiet. Outside, the others rattle their bars. Inside, Will stands buffeted by the current of the stream. His feet sink into water-softened ground.  
  
They know that this state is unstable.  
  
There must be a reckoning.  
  
Will dresses for court, white pressed shirt and suit and tie. He knows that he is innocent. 

| 

Hannibal dresses for court, white pressed shirt and suit and tie. He knows that Will is innocent.   
  
It is a matter of proving it.  
  
The Grand Canyon was carved from water, steadily flowing, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Compared to the eons it took to shape the world, Will Graham has no time at all.  
  
All he needs is a stream, cutting through stone walls.  
  
Hannibal acts. A judge is murdered, and Will Graham couldn’t have done it.  
  
Even when it appears still, water is always flowing.  
  
* * *  
  
It is still winter when Will Graham leaves the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Like water vapor condensed and falling back to the ground, he returns to his home, to his dogs, to Abigail’s bloodstains scrubbed clean.  
  
In the dark, Hannibal waits.  
  
He returns to his therapy.  
  
Will Graham returns; they sit across from each other, in the silence of his cavernous office.   
  
It is as if nothing has changed, a life cycle returning to its start. He sits in Hannibal Lecter’s office, and they have conversations. He goes to Quantico, and he looks at corpses.  
  
The sun sets earlier in the winter. Water freezes over.  
  
But underneath the ice, water is still flowing.  
  
And under the snow, the earth lies dormant and waiting.  
  
* * *  
  
In a barn, Will Graham stands with his gun drawn.  
  
Hannibal steps aside.  
  
His steps are sure and steady. His hand does not shake. It seems so long ago that he killed a man, filling him with nine bullets.  
  
(ten bullets)  
  
Peter Bernadone sewed his social worker in a horse. Clark Ingram crawled out from the womb of a horse. One is a killer, and the other isn’t.  
  
Clark Ingram is supposed to wake up in death, choking on cold grave dirt, the same way he put dozens of girls into the ground.  
  
Peter Bernadone’s social worker is not dead. He pours out of the horse like water.  
  
Will approaches. He cocks the hammer.  
  
“It won’t feel the same,” Hannibal whispers. “It won’t feel like killing me.”  
  
“It doesn’t have to,” Will says, resolute. “I know what it will feel like. It’ll feel good.”  
  
Hannibal’s voice pours over him. “If you’re going to do this, Will… you have to do it for yourself.” He whispers, “This is not the reckoning you promised yourself.”  
  
Will aims. He shoots—  
  
Hannibal’s hand slips between the hammer and the firing pin.  
  
“With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you. I can feed the caterpillar, whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me.”  
  
In winter, water freezes, and the ice is as hard as stone.  
  
* * *  
  
He is stalwart as he climbs the steps to Hannibal’s house. He lets himself in; Hannibal’s door is unlocked. He lays Randall Tier’s corpse on Hannibal’s dining room. The air is quiet and damp, as if he is germinating in the darkness with all of Hannibal’s other plants.  
  
Death begets life. The earth consumes the dead, breaking them down to their component parts, and from the earth new life is born. You live and die and from consumption new life emerges from the ashes, a perpetual cycle of the finite matter on Earth.  
  
Will Graham killed Randall Tier with his bare hands. He ripped the skull from his head, broke bones with fist and palm. The men of old used stone weapons to hunt their prey. He used nothing but his hands, carrying his kill over his shoulder to lay it like an offering.  
  
He takes Will’s bloodied hands, submerges them in water. “Stay with me, Will.”  
  
Drifting, he replies, “Where else am I going to go?”  
  
The blood diffuses in the water. “When you were killing Randall, did you fantasize you were killing me?”  
  
“Yes”  
  
“Most of what we do, most of what we believe, is motivated by death.”  
  
Will meets Hannibal’s gaze. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive than when I was killing him.”  
  
The water is clouded with blood. Hannibal lifts Will’s hands out, wipes them dry, bandages the knuckles.  
  
Do you see what you’ve become?  
  
He is as stalwart as stone. 

| 

He is as changing as water.   
  
* * *  
  
In winter, the stream behind his house freezes over. Will plants himself on ice threatening to crack. In his dreams Abigail stands beside him; he is teaching her how to fish. In other dreams—  
  
It is spring, and they stand buffeted by running water. Abigail casts her line out, fishing for a different future.  
  
Hannibal prepares to leave Baltimore.  
  
His steps are slow, as if he is mired in mud. He sits in his car for a long time outside Hannibal’s office, head buried in his hands, before he finally makes his way inside.  
  
The air is silent and still, but in the stillness a septillion of molecules drift, perpetually in motion, along their random paths until they meet—just for a moment, just long enough for energy to transfer from one to another—before they continue on their own paths—  
  
Random path after random path—  
  
until they are evenly dispersed.   
  
“You sit in that chair, as you have so many times before,” Hannibal says. “It holds among its molecules the vibrations of all our conversations ever held in its presence.”  
  
But water is not constrained as a solid is.  
  
Water finds a path.  
  
* * *  
  
(“Listen very carefully. They know.”)  
  
Will Graham goes to Hannibal Lecter. It is inevitable, the shifting of molecules from one location to another. There is too much of Will Graham in Wolf Trap and not enough of Will Graham in Baltimore.  
  
There is too much of Will Graham at Jack Crawford’s side and not enough at Hannibal Lecter’s side.  
  
He stops at Alana Bloom, lying prone on Hannibal’s doorstep, dying. He stops at the blood in the kitchen, at Abigail Hobbs, alive in the flesh.  
  
Will stands, as if rooted, in Hannibal’s kitchen. This is where Hannibal has flourished for so many years.  
  
Abigail does not move.  
  
Hannibal slips forward, as if wading through water.  
  
Will turns, drawn to the ripple in the air as Hannibal embraces him.  
  
“You were supposed to leave,” Will whispers.  
  
Hannibal replies, “We couldn’t leave without you.”  
  
Blood splatters across his face.  
  
Hannibal presses the knife into Will’s gut.  
  
He clutches at the knife. Blood flows from the gaps between his fingers. He—  
  
“I let you in,” Hannibal says. “I let you know me. I let you see me.”  
  
“You wanted to be seen.”  
  
“By you,” Hannibal replies. He is still holding the knife. He will still hold the knife. “A rare gift, I’ve given you. But you didn’t want it.”  
  
“Didn’t I?”  
  
“You would deny me my life.”  
  
“Not your life.”  
  
“My freedom, then. You’d take that from me. Confine me to an underground cell. Do you believe you could change me the way I’ve changed you?”  
  
Will clutches at the wound. He is smiling. “I already have.”  
  
* * *  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Reblog on Tumblr](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/176100097131/diffusion-chapter-2-virdant-hannibal-tv)


	3. …until evenly distributed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder: **PLEASE TURN ON CREATOR SKINS!** This story relies on a custom CSS skin. Please do not use AO3's download method to download this story as a PDF or ebook--the formatting will be dropped.

* * *  
  
---  
  
The week before he leaves for Italy, he wakes with Abigail’s hand in his—a child’s hand, small and soft. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes his fingers when he wakes, and slips away to do what it is that adult children do when they are languishing at home.   
  
When he sets sail, Abigail sits on the desk next to him. He teaches her the entire trip, a stream of explanations and apologies churning over rocky rapids even as he cuts across the tides.  
  
She accompanies him the entire trip, and it is only in the Norman Chapel in Palermo, Will staring at the bleeding heart left for him, that she drifts away.  
  
* * *  
  
In Italy, Hannibal settles in a house of stone—stone floors polished to a sheen, stone walls, ~~stone countenance~~.  
  
He slips between roles like water: he is Hannibal Lecter, he is Dr. Fell; he is the Chesapeake Ripper, he is Il Mostro—  
  
He folds a body into a heart and waits for Will to find him.  
  
* * *  
  
Water is one of the few substances that expands when it is frozen. It seeps into the cracks of stone, and each time it freezes the crack widens until finally.  
  
The stone splits.  
  
All beings are capable of terrible things when under stress.  
  
* * *  
  
In the basement of a castle in Lithuania, a man lies caged. He is accompanied only by—one after another—the steady drip of water.   
  
In a dining room in Italy, men and women arrive, one by one and two by two, to Hannibal Lecter’s table.  
  
Will has the man murdered. He strings the corpse to the ceiling, a firefly casting light down like a lamp.  
  
Hannibal leaves a swathe of corpses in his wake.  
  
Step by step.  
  
One after another.  
  
Until it is just the two of them, sitting before Botticelli’s Primavera. The Uffizi Gallery is quiet and warm, well-regulated to preserve the art inside. They sit inside, incubated from the winter, one next to the other.  
  
One is a killer, and the other is as well.  
  
Hannibal stares into a face as familiar as his own. “If I saw you every day forever, Will, I would remember this time.”  
  
Will studies Hannibal in return. Precisely, he says, “You and I have begun to blur.”  
  
Like one substance diffusing into another.  
  
“We’re conjoined.”  
  
* * *  
  
How do you separate a mixture?  
  
You destroy the other.

| 

You consume the other.  
  
How do you separate a solution?  
  
* * *  
  
Will Graham wakes up in Wolf Trap. Outside, the air is cold with winter.  
  
At his bedside, sits a notebook filled with calculations in Hannibal’s precise writing.  
  
“Do we talk of teacups and time and the rules of disorder?”  
  
They do not talk about entropy.  
  
A broken teacup does not gather itself up.

| 

A teacup has been shattered more than once.  
  
They do not talk of bone china shattered from strain. They do not talk of the inevitable.  
  
Hours ago, they were in Muskrat Farm. Mason Verger thought to contain them with rope and cord, as if they were carved from stone. As if they were not always capable of slipping their bonds.  
  
Will bit the cheek out of a man named Cordell. 

| 

Hannibal killed a man named Cordell.   
  
And now they stand in Will’s small home. Cordell is dead. Mason Verger is dead. Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter both live.  
  
(they do not need to talk about entropy)  
  
“The teacup is broken. It'll never gather itself back together again.”  
  
The rules of entropy are universal. When two miscible substances are mixed, diffusion is inevitable. The entropy in the universe demands it. Random path after random path, the molecules travel in their unwaveringly straight lines until they meet another molecule. One fleeting interaction after one fleeting interaction, until septillions of them are evenly distributed among each other.  
  
Will, standing in his home, says, “I’m not going to miss you. I’m not going to find you. I’m not going to look for you. I don’t want to know where you are or what you do. I don’t want to think about you anymore.” 

| 

Hannibal, kneeling in the snow as he is arrested, says, “I want you to know exactly where I am. And where you can find me.”  
  
How do you separate a solution?  
  
You let them go.

| 

You put yourself behind walls.  
  
* * *  
  
Hannibal listens.  
  
Music lifts within the cathedral. It resonates over the polished surfaces of the stone, soaring higher and higher.  
  
His mind palace has always been made of stone. Stalwart. A bulwark against indignity and loss alike.  
  
He turns. There is nobody beside him. But there will be.  
  
* * *  
  
It has been three years since he let Hannibal go.

| 

It has been three years since Hannibal put himself behind walls.  
  
Jack Crawford stands beside him, far away from Baltimore, far away from Hannibal Lecter, and tells him about ~~eight dead girls~~ two murdered families.  
  
_People will die._  
  
He has a family now.

| 

“You’re family, Will.”  
  
“Helping Jack is bad for me,” Will says.  
  
And it sounds like Hannibal’s words, from years ago, coming from his mouth.

| 

His letter says, “Soon enough, I fear Jack Crawford will come knocking. I would encourage you, as a friend, not to step back through the door he holds open. It's dark on the other side and madness is waiting...”   
  
But some things are inevitable. He goes. The entropy of the universe dictates it so.  
  
“Will has never been as effective as he is with you inside his head,” Jack says to Hannibal.  
  
How do you separate a solution?  
  
(why would you want to?)  
  
* * *  
  
He is as stalwart as stone.  
  
In the basement of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, in the quiet of the underground dark, Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter stand  
  
—separated by glass—

| 

—separated by glass—  
  
side by side.  
  
They are only having conversations;  
  
and into silence, Hannibal says, “This is a very shy boy, Will. I’d love to meet him.”  
  
“I’m sure you would,” Will says in return.  
  
“Have you considered the possibility that he's disfigured? Or that he may believe he's disfigured?”   
  
“That's interesting.”   
  
“That's not interesting. You thought of that before.”  
  
He nods. “He smashed all the mirrors in the houses, not just enough to get the pieces he wanted. The shards are set so he can see himself. In their eyes. Mrs. Jacobi and Mrs. Leeds. And their families.”   
  
Hannibal says, “Could you see yourself in their eyes, Will? Killing them all?”  
  
_See?_  
  
Of course he can.  
  
He sends Dolarhyde after Fredrick Chilton.

| 

He sends Dolarhyde after Will Graham’s family.  
  
They survive.  
  
Attempt after attempt 

| 

Plot after plot  
  
Until there is nobody left but the two of them to do what must be done.  
  
* * *  
  
Will stands on the street. Hannibal is hauling a corpse from a police car. Hannibal is climbing into the driver’s seat. Hannibal is—  
  
“Going my way?” Hannibal asks.  
  
It is inevitable.   
  
He climbs into the car.  
  
The walls that have separated them have always been permeable.   
  
Hannibal drives them to the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic.  
  
They anchor themselves on the cliffs and watch the waves as they crash against the shore.   
  
Hannibal observes, “The bluff is eroding. There was more land when I was here with Abigail. More land still when I was here with Miriam Lass.”  
  
“Now you're here with me.”  
  
“And the bluff is still eroding. You and I are suspended over the roiling Atlantic. Soon all of this will be lost to the sea.”  
  
Water carves its mark.  
  
So slowly that it appears imperceptible, water weathers the rock, erodes it away.   
  
It only takes time  
  
But eventually, even the slowest stream will carve a canyon.  
  
The water sweeps across the rock in a wave.  
  
Will Graham watches and waits.  
  
Seventy-one percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water.  
  
Is it any surprise that these cliffs have begun to erode as well?  
  
* * *  
  
How do you separate a solution?  
  
Will presses the knife into Dolarhyde’s gut.  
  
Hannibal bites out his throat.  
  
Eventually, everything falls towards equilibrium  
  
Fluid and without resistance  
  
Will bleeds. He bleeds from the wound in his cheek, the wound in his shoulder.  
  
Dolarhyde lies dead, his blood fanning out like the wings of the dragon he aspired to be.  
  
Steadily and without resistance  
  
they drift together.   
  
It is inevitable,  
  
The laws of entropy dictate it so.  
  
When two miscible substances mix together  
  
the particles that make up each substance move naturally  
  
from high concentration to low concentration

| 

from high concentration to low concentration  
  
until evenly distributed.  
  
So, how do you separate a solution?  
  
Will embraces Hannibal, so close that in the moonlight, it is impossible to know where one begins and the other ends.  
  
Why would you want to?  
  
“It’s beautiful.”  
  
* * *  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading.
> 
> Diffusion was inspired by the scene in Dolce, where Will and Hannibal diffuse into each other like water after Will describes them as conjoined. I wanted to--with writing, with form, with structure and language and imagery--recreate the image of Will and Hannibal, sitting across from each other in Hannibal's office, slowly merging together until the two of them were perfectly conjoined--a solution that cannot be separated. I wanted to recreate that scene where they drift like an ink drop in water, one into the other. I can only hope that I managed to get close.
> 
> I want to thank, again, everybody who supported me on this journey. Diffusion may not be very long, but every experiment with form and structure is a challenge, and I could not have done it without the support of my friends, most of whom are not even in Hannibal fandom. I am eternally grateful to their support and willingness to read outside of their respective interests.
> 
> If you enjoyed this story, I would appreciate a kudo, a comment, or even a reblog. You can also find a collection of thoughts/meta under the [project diffusion](https://virdant.tumblr.com/tagged/project-diffusion) tag at my tumblr.
> 
> Thank you again.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos are always appreciated! :)
> 
> A PDF of the story can be found [[ here ]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uk54bdjgp33n9mp/diffusion_pdf.pdf?dl=0)  
> Enjoyed this? [check out my project diffusion tag](https://virdant.tumblr.com/tagged/project-diffusion)  
> [Reblog on tumblr here](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/176314612426/diffusion-virdant-hannibal-tv-archive-of)  
> Want to talk? [follow me on tumblr](https://virdant.tumblr.com/) | [follow me on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant)


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